


Breeding Hope By Counting Stars

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: But They Both Get What They Want, Fraternization, Kylo is a creeper, M/M, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, bottom!ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 03:45:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15282861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: Kylo Ren always gets want he wants, in the end. And what he wants, today? Is Hux inhisend.





	Breeding Hope By Counting Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually an old story; I believe I originally posted it around February 2017, because that's the timestamp on the creation of the Word document. But for whatever reason, my brain gremlins got a hold of it, ripped it to shreds, and I deleted it very shortly afterward. I'm reposting it today basically as a middle finger to said brain gremlins, but also because I know someone who always wants bottom!Ren content and when I realised last night that this is what this is...I figured it should exist, if only for that reason.

“Is this some sort of joke?”

The faintest frisson of uncertainty moved somewhere deep beneath the bared planes of his skin. Kylo Ren ignored it. Such matters were but the concern of a child, as faded and faint as the memories of a time before he had known his own power, his own influence. Now he shifted his great lupine body, the length of it extended in pure invitation, and curved his lips to half-grin.

“Does it look like one?” he asked, almost coquettish. Hux, for his part, just looked like he was getting a headache.

“Honestly, I don’t know _what_ this looks like.”

Ren now allowed his lips to curl to a frown. “That might be because you’re not even _looking_ at me.”

“Well.” With a clearing of his throat, Hux kept his eyes fixed upon some point just to the left of his face. “You are very… _naked_ , Ren.”

Shifting his arms with deliberate flex, Ren propped his hands behind his head, indulged in the slight tilting upward of hips. “That’s the point.”

“The _point_?” This burst of sudden irritation was not the passion Ren had hoped to inflame here tonight, but the flashing fury of those eyes was at least something more than the smooth-faced expression of but moments earlier. Still, Hux had already begun to subside back behind that mask, words now coming cool and quick. “Did you wreck your own quarters? Because if you did, I don’t care what your rank is, you can’t have mine. You can take one of the lesser executive suites, and get out.”

After allowing the words to echo through the man’s bedroom for just a moment too long, Ren sighed, shifted again upon the standard issue coverlet. It scraped and pulled along his skin, hardly so welcome as would be the hands of the man before him. But those were instead clenched to fists at his side, and Ren knew he had work yet to do.

“It’s not your rooms that I want, General,” he said, too casual, too careless; he really ought to have known better. He’d only been pursuing the man for the better part of three years, and Hux had never once taken the hint.

And it seemed now that not even so blatant a display could make the man realise what it was Ren wanted of him. As it was, Hux clearly forced his fingers to extend before lacing them again at his back in light parade rest; even as he tried to re-order himself to the perfect image of an executive officer, he all but radiated negative tension.

“This isn’t funny.”

Again, Ren shifted, and hid an internal pout that Hux’s level gaze had not been drawn down to the bounty at the junction of his thighs. “I thought we had already established this wasn’t a joke.”

“We did no such thing.”

“Well.” From the very beginning of their acquaintance, Hux had declared Ren’s methods to be as subtle as a bantha in a ballroom. In that, Ren supposed Hux had only himself to blame when Ren’s hand shifted in a deliberate path downward. There, it fisted about his cock, the flaccid length warm and thick in his grip. He hadn’t bothered with lubricant, not yet; he’d instead rather hoped Hux would have had sense enough to offer to help. Instead Ren only indulged himself in the welcome drag of callused flesh over sensitive skin, slow and deliberate as a well-practised kata.

“Does this make you want to laugh?” Ren asked, genuinely curious. Something closer to frustration coloured Hux’s aura now; it burned bright about his form like a star’s death corona. And the general spared his cock only the briefest of looks before his eyes moved up, again. Faint high colour had already begun to darken the pale skin of cheeks and throat.

“Ren.” His tongue slipped out, but he aborted the lick of dry lips halfway through. “What _is_ this.”

“Are you really so blind?”

The blunt incredulity of his words had Hux puffing up immediately, like some offended lizard; it had Ren remembering the brief incident when Han Solo had acquired a ysalamir. The damned thing had taken immediate offense to his presence: the slender back had arched, reptilian eyes wide, scales raised like hackles. He hadn’t really been able to blame it. He himself had felt to have had all his limbs lopped off at their highest joints, his mind muddied and confused. They’d told him later he’d almost killed it with his bare hands. There had been deep reproach in their words. But he’d had never heard any explanation from Solo why he’d thought to bring the damned thing within range of his extraordinarily Force-sensitive child.

“Hux,” he said, almost exasperated for more reasons than just the most obvious – and for not the first time Ren wondered if this might have been easier had Hux himself been more Force sensitive than alusteel. “Look. I’ve been trying to tell you this for years.”

“Tell me _what_?”

That frustration burned again, his aura bright and pulsing, like a freshly slashed artery. “Hux.” His hand moved just a little faster. “I want this.”

“Why?” This time he all but spat the words out, though Ren could taste the bitter-sharp tang of faint panic beneath. “I wouldn’t have thought the rules of fraternisation in the ranks applied to _you_ , of all people.”

“It’s not…” This time he did actually stop, hand falling free to slap against the thin mattress beneath. “Hux,” he began, again, and scowled as he shook his hair free of his eyes. “I wanted you the first time I saw you.”

This time Hux actually did take a full step backward, eyes turned to terrible blank darkness. “All right. This has gone far enough.”

It could be called nothing but an entirely inappropriate use of the Force. But then Ren had never cared for such niceties, even when he’d been someone else, even when he’d been pretending to be something better than he truly was. With one hand thrust out, half-risen from the bed, Ren held him still. But even as Hux remained utterly unable to move, their eyes met and held, blue and black like ugly bruising across pale skin. With a faint smile Ren flopped back, hand already returning to his cock. Feeling it continue to fill, hard and heavy in his hand, he gave a crooked great grin and raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll let you go,” he said, too easy, “and then you can come see for yourself just how _funny_ I find this.”

And yet, when Ren released the hold, Hux did not even once glance down. “For all I know, you get off on humiliating me,” he hissed, skin both deathly pale and blotched red with fury; all it summoned from Ren was either a sigh or a moan, but more likely something that managed to be a synergistic nightmare of both.

 “You _are_ pretty when you’re angry,” Ren agreed. “But then I find you pretty no matter what.”

Saying something so utterly patronising could only engender fury from a man like Hux, but then Ren had known that for years. “How _dare_ you.”

But Ren’s brow furrowed; perhaps he had gone too far. Hux’s aura now tasted of ash and iron, and little else other than true deep anger. As he sat up, he said, aloud and to himself, “Maybe I went about this the wrong way.”

Incredibly, that actually brought a chuckle from the general, dark and sharp though it was. “You think so?”

“But you haven’t left,” he pointed out, entirely without guile; they both could see the proof it. “I think some part of you wants this.”

Hux’s eyes darkened to black. “Get out of my head.”

“It’s not that easy to get in it,” he said, more wondering than annoyed, already leaning back into the faint nest he’d made of Hux’s entirely inadequate pillows. “Especially when I’m distracted,” he added, and already his hand had made its way back to his cock, hot and demanding between his thighs. The relief of returned pressure had him sighing, briefly closing his eyes. “And there are other things I’d prefer to get into.”

When he opened them again, it was to find Hux still before him, cheeks now flushed nearly to scarlet. “Crude, Ren.”

He only shrugged, the movement barely shifting his hand off-rhythm. “Did you expect better?”

“I didn’t expect _anything_!” The pause he took then seemed entirely involuntary; his breath came too hard, his hands fisted at his sides. And when he looked down now, his face had twisted itself to bitter rictus, as if it were apparently against his own will. “But if we do this…you’re not…”

That small concession heartened Ren, even if there was a throb of disappointment in the twitch of his cock. Reaching over, he opened one palm; the small bottle lying upon the bedstand rose with barely a quiver, floating over to his hand. Blatant shock crossed Hux’s face at first, though he tempered almost immediately with something wavering between disgust and disbelief.

“Did you just—”

The opening of the bottle, squirt of the gel inside: the sound of both cut him clean off. And then Ren slicked himself up, not bothering to check the low groan of relief as he did so. “You _could_ come help, you know.”

Given the nightmare of seducing a man as apparently impervious to flirtation and seduction as Hux was, Ren had long since come to figure that Hux generally gave little thought to sex and relationships. But in this Ren could now sense a deeper reluctance, one that brought Hux closer to Ren even as something in him appeared to withdraw with every step nearer. And he perched himself upon the edge of his own bed as though it were a minefield. His eyes were permitted the briefest flicker downward, and Ren snorted, tightened his grip.

“Look all you like.”

But Hux did not. His eyes, strangely kaleidoscopic in their ever-shifting shade, had fixed upon Ren instead: analytical, now, and deeply curious despite the man’s better self. “I wouldn’t have thought you liked that sort of thing.” The palm of one hand shifted, pressed down on the faintest jitter of one thigh. “Given the fact your armour and mask cover everything, I mean.”

“I don’t need them here.”

His lips pressed even tighter together, then. Even as Ren wondered what he might have said, Hux’s eyes shifted again, tracking over his body; everything about the motion proved too quick for his own tastes, though it seemed methodical enough. But Hux did it once, twice, three times. One hand began a low twitch at his side, though it remained only there.

“You can touch me.” One eyebrow cocked lazily high, with the roll of his head. “If you want.”

A small, strangled sound – and then: oddly, a gloved fingertip breached the space between them, pausing just above one of the moles that formed a small cluster near his left hip.

“I didn’t realise you had so many of these.” A brief snort, and Hux bit back on a flush that deepened for all the wrong reasons. “Well, I’ve really only seen your face, and then not often. But they seem to be _everywhere_ …”

His entire body jerked. Hux’s hand swiftly withdrew, like that of a child discovering the true nature of open flame. Their eyes met in the silence. Something was said, but Kylo did not know what it was. For all he heard things well beyond the range and understanding of most, in this he knew himself to be profoundly deaf.

“Hux,” he began, and then paused. The other man still stared at the same small piece of skin, as though it were all that had been bared to him, and remained very still.

“What?”

“I…” He swallowed, didn’t know why it hurt. “It’s fine.” And then, in entirely too much of a rush: “I’m just…ticklish.”

Their eyes met, and Hux’s had turned flat and grey, like the sky before soft winter rain. “ _Ticklish_.”

“Is that really so hard to believe?”

And he shifted his slight weight, the sigh far heavier than the situation ought to have reasonably permitted. “Possibly it’s not as impossible as the fact I just found you in my _bed_ , but yes. It’s odd, in its own way.”

Staring at the ceiling, now, which even in the general’s quarters was bland enough to be utterly anonymous, Ren contemplated the cutting of losses. Even as his dick twitched again, this time in frank disappointment. “Look, if you really don’t want this—”

“I didn’t say that.” Ren’s eyes flicked over at the sharp words, like a cadet called to attention. “But I didn’t expect it, you realise? So you really do have to give me some time here.”

Propping himself up on his elbows, now, Ren pressed somewhat closer to the man at his side. Though Hux didn’t move back, the tensing of every muscle spoke as to the intent to do so upon a moment’s whim. Ren didn’t know why it annoyed him. But bit back on it, even as he pursed his lips, and tried again.

“It’s just _sex_ , Hux,” he said, more belligerent than bold. “If you’re going to make this another one of your endless _missions_ , then I might as well go.”

An ugly twist to his features, and then Hux outright sneered. “Why is that?” he said, hands tight on his thighs. “Perhaps because you fail them so often?”

So easy it was, to fall back into the higher passion of their cursed arguments. “You have no power to assign _me_ missions, General.”

“Which is why _you_ found yourself in my bed. It was by your own will. I didn’t ask for this.”

Ren leaned too close, and Hux did not lean back. Instead he tilted his head upwards, lips twisted as Ren whispered, “But you _want_ it.”

Those strange blue-green eyes only stared back into him, even and unyielding. A moment later, Hux pulled back, one hand passing through his hair. “This isn’t going to work,” he muttered, half turned away. And Ren’s stomach felt hollow, twisted, as he stared at the almost-profile of that bare head.

“Hux—”

“Ren, I honestly don’t know what you expected.” Something had changed – something had grown very weary in him, his rail-straight spine bowed forward. “Personally, I came here expecting to go to sleep.”

“Well, fuck your schedule,” he said, rough, brutal. “You can do better than that.”

“What, by doing you instead?”

“ _Yes_.”

In Ren’s mind, that should have had the general thrusting himself upon him, the uniform dragging over his bare skin in rough promise, one gloved hand hard about his aching cock. Instead, Hux took forefinger and thumb and pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. The odd vulnerability of him burned strange and dark, especially when Ren was the one stretched out naked on his own bed.

“I haven’t done this in years,” he said, sudden and slow. Ren only frowned.

“So?”

“So, I likely won’t be…satisfactory.”

“Hux.” He almost laughed, and fortunately caught it before it could be the last incendiary round that set everything ablaze to violent ruin. “You do realise that you could just sit there and glare and me, and I could jerk myself off quite happily to that alone.”

To his own obvious disgust, this left Hux apparently both appalled and intrigued. “And if I said that was all you were getting tonight?”

At last his hand began, again, to move. “Frown a bit more. The way you do when Mitaka fucks up a navigational report.” And he scowled himself, just a little. “You know the expression I mean. You end up doing it like half a dozen times every shift.”

Hux bit back his own reflexive laugh. “You’re an idiot,” he said, though it came out more like wonder than any kind of accusation. Ren shrugged, pumped faster.

“You’ve called me worse.”

“Not to your face.” But before the muttered words could be mulled over, he cleared his throat, hands tightening. “Do you really want this?”

“You really have no idea how long I’ve wanted you.”

“Ren—”

A slick hand reached out. Hux immediately withdrew. “These gloves are expensive.”

“So take them off.”

His facial expression held all the reluctance of his words, but still he did it. And then, bare and uncertain, one hand moved over Ren’s collarbone, slow and intrigued. The dip between pectoral muscles held his attention for a long moment, before Hux followed the depression carved down the midline of his torso. His navel stopped him, with a brief flicker of fingertips around the rim. And Ren felt an ache lower down, ass clenching at the thought of that finger elsewhere. But Hux’s brow furrowed.

“Never seen someone this shredded?” Ren asked, and Hux for a moment looked nothing if absolutely repelled.

“Oh, for kriff’s sake, Ren!”

“It’s all yours.” And Ren didn’t mean the words to take on that odd double-edged vulnerability. “For tonight, anyway.”

It was hard to see beneath his tunic what Hux’s own body was making of all this play. But the rising flush that climbed higher than even his high starched collar, the dilation of his pupils: both told a story Ren knew was far older than perhaps even the Force itself. And that same arousal had turned those pale eyes very dark, even in the too-bright illumination of his room. Ren almost wanted to turn the lights down, to draw Hux dangerously close and have it all be but blind touches and half-whispers in a cradling dark.

But Hux needed the light to see him by, his jaw working as he began to trace the moles on his thigh. “You can touch it, you know,” Ren said, half-hoarse. “My dick, I mean.”

A roll of his eyes, and Hux did no such thing. “This reminds me of a constellation,” he said, instead, eyes still fixed upon the skin. “I’m just not sure which one.”

“Oh, the great General Hux has forgotten something?”

A black look sent a shiver through his body entire; he’d always known the general had a particular gift for discipline. “Do you want to get fucked or not?”

“Why, are you offering?”

Looking down at his cock, Hux’s mouth opened, and then closed on silence. A moment, and it was in his hand. Something clumsy and electric both burned in his grip, and when Ren gasped Hux let go almost immediately. It left him staring at his slick palm, astonished, and very quiet.

“Hux.”

“No.”

“ _Yes_.” His impatience turned his voice to low growl, hips jerking forward in crude demand. “Don’t think about it,” Ren said. “Just feel it.”

It instead looked very much like the man might just turn and go. But, with jaw set and teeth apparently gritted, Hux took him in hand, again. A slow, uneven stroke: both amateur and entirely lacking in skill. But still, it had been something long dreamed of. Ren closed his eyes, arched his back, pushing into it as if it were a cliff he could throw himself over, learning to fly only on the long fall down.

Indeed, even as his cock hardened impossibly further, it felt as though his flesh melted from his bones. But there was nothing urgent in such sensation, nothing to drag him screaming over the edge. Instead, he floated only in sensation, as though Hux’s touch alone were the enveloping warmth of a bacta tank, and he drowned even as it brought him back to life over and over again.

 A fleeting, unfortunate thought flashed through his mind: what Snoke might make of this, of the two men he had assigned as co-commanders of the flagship of the fleet, tangled together in this way. But Snoke had been the one to teach Ren how to build the saber he wielded even now. And that saber had always felt an extension of his body – because, too, Snoke had always taught him that his _body_ was the true weapon, and in every physical sense. He surely could not complain at the result of his own lessons.

But Ren kept his great body still, now. He instead only allowed Hux to explore, the man’s expression in a terrible battle, curious and critical alike. Long quick fingers moved further down, pressing too light over his perineum. A whining breath escaped, eyes open, fingers bunching in the thin grey coverlet.

The darkened gaze Hux turned upon him felt so much like the event horizon of a black hole, of the one second before the fall, before being devoured. “Do you actually want this?”

The uncertainty of his words was so alien to the collected calm of the façade he wore otherwise. “Would I be lying here if I didn’t?”

“I don’t understand anything about you, Kylo Ren.” A single fingertip dared further than any of the others, just ghosting about the edge of his asshole. Even as it fluttered beneath the touch, Ren’s whole body tightening to match, Hux frowned deeper at this discovery. “Did you actually…”

“Yes.” Unabashed, he shifted, hoping the light would catch the shine of the slick already worked there. “I mean, I wasn’t going to say no if you bent over the desk for me, but I figured I’d be ready for anything.”

For a moment, Hux stilled. When he spoke again, it came flat, cool, a clear sheet of very thin ice. “You want me to bend over a desk for you.”

“I’d bend you over a console on the bridge, if I could,” he replied, cocky, candid; it always came as the oddest sensation, this brief escape of a personality well-buried beneath the robes and helmet of the Knight of Ren. “And I’ve thought about it,” he added, only grinning more broadly as Hux’s frown etched deeper. “But there’s no fun in just _taking_ that sort of thing. Not when it’s more of a challenge to be given it.”

But when Hux leaned back, weight upon his heels, Ren had to wonder if he’d gone too far. “I’m not going to bend over on the bridge for you, Ren,” he said, and nothing of the tone brooked the slightest nonsense. And he surely noticed the answering twitch of Ren’s cock even as he sighed, said in the most put-upon voice Ren had ever heard from the man, “but you can spread your thighs for me, I suppose.”

Ren had not even managed to make Hux sound this long-suffering that one time when he’d demanded the third immediate repair of his Upsilon in two standard weeks. But Ren’s body had pulled well ahead of his thoughts, hips already inclined to welcome Hux forward. Yet something had turned clumsy, again, in his uncertain movement. He was doing this all too quick, one hand already moving to press experimentally at his hole. Ren drew a hissing breath, a nail caught on the wrong angle. But: the power of it could overcome any amount of pain. This was power over someone else, wrought through his body alone. It could render pain so easily; it was quite something else indeed to engender pleasure.

And Hux was undeniably aroused. His finger moved, already dipping deep inside; the other hand already fumbled at his flies. Even as his mind hazed with pleasure, Ren found it easy enough to use the Force to aid him.

But Hux’s expression held no small degree of repulsion as he looked down at where his pants had obligingly opened without physical movement. “…I really wish you wouldn’t do that so close to my genitalia.”

“It’s _a dick and balls_ , Hux,” he corrected, with all the lazy warning of a predator not yet quite roused to the hunt. “And there’s a lot more you could be doing with them, too.”

Of course that only made Hux look as if he wanted to complain – loudly and at length – but it was hardly an expression Ren found unfamiliar. It was stranger indeed that Hux instead turned back to his work, one hand reaching over to take the lubricant Ren had abandoned earlier. It took him three attempts to take it in hand, and then: he took himself in hand, slow in each slick movement. A moment later, and a snub head pressed at his hole. It wasn’t really quite loose enough for this much, this fast. But as Hux leaned forward, palms braced on the bed, Ren pushed outward. He had taken worse, in his time. And this, at least, had been entirely his own choice.

As Hux slipped entirely inside, Ren’s lip curled beneath the fierce pressure of teeth. Arching up, he hurried the motion, preferring quick sting to long slow stroke. When Hux had fully seated himself, Ren moved his own hands swiftly upward. The uniform trousers had only been pressed halfway down his thighs; moving up under the tunic, Ren found the small ass fitted easily into the twinned cradles of his palms.

Hux’s dark scowl was that usually reserved for those pilots who dared to damage his prized TIE fighters. “ _Ren_.”

“It’s a nice ass,” he replied, perfectly innocent even as he gave both cheeks a fierce squeeze. “I’ve been trying to tell you for ages.”

The indrawn breath edged dangerously close to a sob. But Hux did not give over to that. Instead he pulled out, the fat head of his dick just stretching Ren’s rim enough to have his spine arcing like electrified wire. Then: _in_ , hard and fierce and too much to take. It punched Ren’s breath from him, though Hux himself sounded as if he’d forgotten how to breathe himself as he repeated the motion first once, and then again. He moved with irregular rhythm, unpractised, almost confused; it seemed as though he’d caught himself between his own pleasure and that of Ren beneath him. And when they met, Ren found his eyes blue and black both, like sky stretched to infinity.

And he smiled. “You can move faster.”

“Really?” His words held a strange cadence, untidy in their presentation in the way the man himself never could quite be. “I’m not…hurting you?”

“Even if you were,” he said, toes curling, thighs pressing hard to the cool leather of the belt about that narrow waist, “I’d probably like it.”

Hux snorted – and then, somehow, managed to gather some of his usual composure about himself as he looked down the length of his nose. “Of _course_ you would.”

Blunt fingers again dug into that pert little ass, hard enough to bruise. Hux swore, and even as Ren savoured the taste of such frivolity, Ren wished he could see it. Since coming to Snoke, he’d had so few things to truly mark as his alone. “Come on, General,” he goaded with light mockery, even as the man hissed through gritted teeth. “Wage your war on me.”

At that, Hux just rolled his eyes. It didn’t stop him from jerking his hips forward, Ren grunting at the sudden deep press of cock within him. But slick movement, the slap of skin on skin, and the cool heat of his body, pressed too close: both had been desired for too long, burned too quick and too deep now. It didn’t even matter that Hux proved too stiff, even in his arousal; perhaps it had been longer even than he had admitted to. The rhythm of the thrusts was never quite _right_ , the angle of each stroke never quite striking where Ren craved it most.

But the moment he did do it – the moment when Ren felt unanchored, drifting, gasping as though all the atmosphere had been explosively cycled from the ship – Ren clenched down hard, as if to hold him there, to savour that white-out sucker punch of deepest pleasure. It proved too much for Hux. The man’s climax hitting him like a bolt between the eyes – his mouth fell open, eyes blank and so terribly surprised, something unspoken and unknown upon a stilled tongue.

Even as Ren continued to roll his hips beneath him, still seeking, Hux remained utterly still, the ragged ruin of his hair falling into his eyes. At Ren’s hissing breath, and a particularly sharp jolt, he looked down – and then, almost immediately away. His head had bowed in something very much like shame. Breathing hard, and harsh, Hux did not draw back. Ren held him yet inside.

And he had no intention of letting him go. Raising his hands, he brushed the hand back and away; Hux’s eyes spoke into the silence, the strange hard light of them saying more than even his silvered oratory might ever hope for. Ren kept his own silence, though his hand slipped between them. With their eyes locked, he began to work himself to the climax that had earlier drawn so tantalisingly close. And Hux surged forward, their teeth clacking together, his lips and tongue thick and too damp. But the warmth in his hand jolted at that upon his lips, Ren pressing up to take everything Hux offered and more.

Release took him as did the madness of bloodlust; it left him blinded and deaf, his mind afire and his body something beyond himself. But even as their kiss broke, Ren forced himself to look only forward, his entire worldview nothing but Hux’s frank surprise at his own mad impulse.

 But even as Ren’s body wracked with tremors, coming down from the high like a man pulled too quick from the most potent of spice, Hux finally withdrew. His back, still clad in that damned uniform, his ass masked by the fall of his tunic though he’d not pulled his trousers up, lay presented to him. It was a message one could hardly take any other way but as what was intended.

But Ren only stared at him as though the general were a puzzle he could not solve. The only skin he could see was the nape of his neck, and he found it not so white and unblemished as he might have once believed it to be.

“Hux.”

“What?”

But he no answer to give, for all he’d invited the question. In truth Ren had no idea of what to say – of what _could_ even be said, between them now. And so he turned his attention to the small stand beside the bed; he’d stocked it not only with lubricant, but a small selection of sanitary items. Hux made no motion to do the same, eyes fixed upon Ren’s face as he moved about his own work. Glancing up, Ren offered a fresh moistened towelette; Hux only shook his head. And this close, again, he thought it so strange to see him this way.

“Your freckles,” he said, suddenly. “They’re like stardust. Scattered over your skin.”

Mistakes came so easy to him, even in this; something shuttered itself away behind Hux’s eyes then, small and secret and hard, though Hux himself did not yet retreat.

“Don’t,” he said, and that faintest of whispers had Ren pursing his lips, quite unable to keep even such simple petulance at bay.

“What, you don’t like poetry?”

Those strange bright-shard eyes blinked, as slow and deliberate as a felinx contemplating the hunt. “I’m not sure _that_ is what this is about.”

“I can leave, if that suits you better.”

With the sharpness of those words, Ren turned the hurt from himself and outward; though it only had Hux himself grimacing in turn, it gave no satisfaction at all. “No, I just…” A sigh, sharp and irritated, punctuated his words like a blade. “I didn’t invite you here.”

“Like I said, I can leave.”

“But I can ask you to stay.” His voice turned odd, then, contemplative even as his eyes took on a critical tilt. “I’m not finished with mapping you, for starters.”

The words sent a prickling over his skin – as if the Force had rippled through him, echoing the sentiment of the man but mere inches away. “You really think you can find anything more?”

One hand bridged the gap, though not completely; Ren had almost leaned into the touch when Hux withdrew, shaking his head. “I think there’s a lot to discover about you, Kylo Ren,” he muttered, and then shifted uncomfortably in his trousers. “But it can wait until morning.”

“Don’t you have work to do?”

With that single arched eyebrow, Ren caught at last something of the Hux who had always been as a siren call – tempting him forward to the depths, and to disaster. “I can always add you to the list.”

With a low hum, Ren let a smile curl his lips in devilish upswing. “And I could always bend you over your desk.”

Rolling his eyes, Hux said nothing more, only pushing himself back to his feet; a moment later, awkward stretch aside, he moved to the ‘fresher. As he passed through the door, the other hand flicked off the lights in the bedroom. “Go to sleep, Ren.”

But he didn’t. Listening to the sonic starting up, he stared instead at the general’s ceiling. In the darkness, it was little else but black. Ren still fancied he could see something of the stars, even when he did actually close his eyes.

After all, Hux hadn’t said _no_.


End file.
